When is Modern? When is Contemporary Art? A frame of reference by Cassandra Philida Six Most people think of Modern Art as a slurry 1967) in the garden… over a half composed of Impressionism, Surrealism, Expres- century ago. Ellsworth Kelly’s edges sionism, Cubism and lots of other “isms” that were admired for being hard in Jansen’s History of Art has condensed into three Color Field paintings, the” patron categories Expression, Abstraction and Fantasy saint” of Pop Art was Marcel to cover emotional statements, formal structure Duchamp who doubles as the and the labyrinth of the mind, respectively. All patron saint of 1970’s Conceptual of this falls under the heading of “Modernism” Art, which is still developing. Judy which gives the artist “a mission” to create Pfaff’s Dragons was installed in the something new and define, if not influence, the 1981 Biennial, Whitney Museum of meaning of his time. American Art, New York. It seems so fresh and new but it was 32 years When is “Modern”? The Impressionists were ago. We have Christos “ Happen- confounding people in 1860s! Art Nouveau in ings”, Nevelson and Oldenburg the 1890s! More than a century ago! Matisse in the 1960s and so many more. created the “Joy of Life” in 1905. Roualt, Nolde, The information explosion that the Dragons by Judy Pfaff The Fifer Kokoshka’s great works were created in the an installation at The Whitney, 1981 by Edouard Manet internet and computers brings all early 1900’s, a century ago! Kandinsky died in this to our attention with an immediacy that belies the decades. 1944 before World War II had even ended. Picasso’s Guernica was ex- hibited in 1937 capturing the Spanish Civil War. 1850s seem more than Alexander Calder (`1898-1976), Joan Miro,(1893-1983) and M.C a century away from 1950s when Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns and Escher(1898-1972) had long and artistically productive lives, but their creative lives were finished thirty or forty years ago. We have to define Larry Rivers were “defining the meaning of their time.” When Dubuffet them as “modern” because all these great artists and the many that were and De Kooning were demonizing the female figure and the conven- not mentioned radically changed the way we perceived our world and what we judged as ART. They are not Contemporary…. That means NOW or VERY RECENTLY, perhaps no older than the viewer. The 21st Century has basketballs in fishtanks, stuffed zebras and sharks, plastics and more plastics, bare white rooms with huge black smudges on canvas. “less is more” “de-structure everything that was” or from WB Yeats expressing the weltschmertz of our times: “Now that the ladders are gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag-and-bone shop of my heart.” Photography is the unsung hero of modern art. H aving an accurate im- Les Nymphéas, Monet 1919 age of reality freed the artists to present their impressions, abstractions and fantasies from “that foul rag –and- bone shop.” We know what our great, tional definition of grace, Dubuffet said for all who followed, “ Look to grandparents and their world looked like. We don’t need, although we my work as an enterprise for the rehabilitation of scorned values and a may still desire, a work of their ardent celebration.” The violent “furious energy of process. realistic oil painting “of Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism generally was a conscious because we have rebuke to the Mom, apple pie and Peter Pan collars of the 1950s but a photograph. THAT was the 1950s. Those most “modern” of sentiments and artistic Actually we even configurations were created over sixty years ago! know what their parents looked In the 1960’s the iconic work like, although it is by Charles Demuth, I Saw very faded. Anyone The Figure 5 In Gold (1928) who cares to can know a great deal was so familiar that Robert In- Piet Mondrian: Tableau no. 2 / Composition no. V, 1914 diana appropriated it in 1963 about history and and made a sensation! So we facts of the past because someone took a picture of it. Photography arrive at the art created a “life- established itself as an art rather than a tool in the 20th century. 21st time” ago…Rauschenberg, century technologies have erased time and space and turned aesthetics, Lichtenstein, Kienholz . The photography and all the arts upside down and expanded the parameters Rothko Chapel in Houston, to infinity. Have you ever seen a halogram? Modern art is art since the whose admirers associate 1860’s. Contemporary reflects NOW. “Now” is expanding so rapidly that it is gone before we noticed. it with “trance-like rapture “ was built with Barnett New- *** Jansen’s History of Art has an extensive Illustrated Time Chart. Literature, Politics,Science etc, as it relates to ART. It is fascinating! man’s Broken Obelisk (1963- Broken Obelisk by Barnett Newman For more information about the artists or articles in this issue go to www.wilmetteartsguild.org A Few of the Wilmette Arts Guild’s Contemporary Artists Force of a Thousand Hearts by Franco Muscarella Blue Bird by Judith Edelman Cocooning by Rita Price “Air and Earth” by Shirley Engelstein “Spring in Korean Mountains” by Hyang Sook Cho “Corncobs of Chicago” by Howard Frank For more information about the artists or articles in this issue go to www.wilmetteartsguild.org Black Mountain College: The Womb of Twentieth Century American Arts Gathered Bits by Julie Ressler But between the vincible, who had surrendered to the public world, and the invincible, ther perception”. This essay was to become a primer for the Black who would not, there were those who began to ask why they had given up, unable to take their submission as final, and yet not knowing how, or whether indeed, they might Mountain poets. The unit of structure in the poem was reduced become artists once again...It was for these that Black Mountain was founded.” John down to what could fit within an utterance. That became a distinc- Andrew Rice, Founder Black Mountain College, tive style of poetic diction (e.g. “yr” for “your”) The Black Mountain “The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of poets pursued the Beats and the Beats responded. Each made the learning.” Alfred North Whitehead The Aims of Education, l929 other even more famous. If artists would dream a school, they would dream Black Mountain Thinkers, Artists and Scientists were looking for new paradigms, new College in the North Carolina near Asheville which actually existed expressions for their discontent with an increasingly structured and for two brief decades of utterly astounding productivity 1933-1957. rigid world order. They needed the scope of using connections All manner of experiments were brought forth and polished. Buck- to new materials and ideas that science was bringing forth. WW minster Fuller found intern Kenneth Snelson and his geodesic dome I (“war to end all wars”) and the Depression had sharply focused appeared. Anni Albers designed avant garde weavings and jewel- critical minds on the flaws inherent in our society. While the gov- ry. Ruth Asawa came from being interned in US camp for the Japa- ernment passed laws and funded certain educational projects that nese to produce incredible sculptures and went on to found many “would be of use to the State,” which lead to the Smith-Hughes cultural organizations in San Francisco and serve on the California Act of 1917, John Dewey and others protested vehemently that Arts Council. There are so many more! This shining interlude was education must be useful to the individual and that no one knew the womb of Twentieth Century arts and poetry which came to ex- enough to predict what would be useful thirty or fifty years later… plode onto the stage of the sixties and remains vital even until today. the life span of that individual . The changes were going to be too rapid and too profound. After WW ll returning vets had quite Just a list of faculty and student names leaves us breathless at the enough of authoritarian living. They were disillusioned by and dis- tremendous number of cultural power sources who gathered gusted by what the Establishment had wrought. They wished to there at that time. The Advisory Board was John Dewey, Walter be free to experiment and learn as they chose. They needed to Gropius, and Albert Einstein! Some of the collaborations were as- expand their approaches to art to encompass a world view that tounding. There was a theatrical of Eric Satie’s Ruse of the Medusa the war had foisted on them. They had seen the enemy and it was (La piége de Méduse), arranged by John Cage : Buckminster Fuller within us all. as Baron Medusa, William Schrauger as Adolfo, Elaine de Kooning as Frisette, and Merce Cunningham as Jonas, “a costly mechanical The interdisciplinary aspect in which no form of creativity was supe- monkey.” Clemens Kalischer, photographer, recorded this. At this rior to another, where weaving , painting, dance, music and inven- level who was the teacher and who was the student? There were tion were all encouraged led to lightning connections. Creatives in poems published that were illustrated by Rauschenberg and Cy all fields could talk to each other! This lead to an explosion of ex- Twombley, just to mention two. There were fabulous photographs traordinary work that we are still sifting through and enjoying.